Online storage services such as data backup and recovery, anti-virus scan, disk repair, removal of malware and so forth, are currently broadly available to client computers through communication with remote network servers on which storage tools are installed. The communication between the client computers and remote servers is typically established using software agents installed on the client computers. However, such software agents are not always readily installed and may be shut down or infected by a virus or malware on the client computers.
Also, current online storage services and software agents are dependent on the operating system of the client computers. Thus, an operating system must be provisioned to the client system before online storage services can be provided. Furthermore, when the operating system is impaired or paralyzed, the remote servers will lose the opportunity to access the mass storage of the client computers and cannot provide the online storage services to the client computers.